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Shit Just Got a Little Too Real

(Steven Cohen - One of the most influential performance artists in the world!)

When I used to travel for business and pleasure, I had this annoying little habit: I asked the person seated next to me to tell me the funniest thing that ever happened to him/her.

I heard a lot of very funny stories.

Unfortunately, I no longer have that elephant memory, but once in a while something bubbles up to surface and I recall with clarity a hysterical story which, moments later, dissipates. I guess that’s what’s called, “Getting old.” It may also explain why half the day I walk around asking, “Where are my glasses?” when they’re on the top of my head.

Lately, I’ve been undergoing a sensory deprivation sort of thing. Under the advice of two neurotologists, specialists of my rare neurological deafness diseases, I leave my house daily. Both doctors agree that I’m too isolated which renders me intolerant to sound. However, I land up in the same place, my friend’s cafe where I write. It’s mostly quiet which defies the reason why I leave the house in the first place. Best of all, it has wifi and delicious food.

Yet, when I do do things which involve sound, such as food shop and visit doctors to be told I should go out more, I’m incapacitated for hours, sometimes days.

That’s what’s known as a catch-22.

I can also attribute my sensory deprivation to the small town where I live dealing with the same people. Over the past four years I learned the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” fits the bill. I also learned that the pen is mightier than the sword. And, when you use the pen to stab someone in the eye whose familiarity breeds contempt, well, it depends who you are for what action to take: 9-1-1 for police or medics.

Quel quandary!

As I learned first hand while living here, justice is meted on a discretionary basis. Because, anywhere else in America, the things that go on here would be stopped on a dime and certain people would be tossed into jail and not allowed to roam wild doing whatever the fuck they want.

Yet, I digress. Getting back to my sensory deprivation, I’ve had extraordinary dreams. They make no sense, but O M G, they are simply gorgeous. As gorgeous as this photo:

Genius Steven Cohen

My internal landscapes and the peoples who populate this phantasmic world are fascinating, vivid beyond description, stranger than any sci-fi novel and totally unable to recreate when I sit down to write. Best of all, they’re old friends, having been in my dreams decades ago.

I don’t know whether my sensory deprivation is the cause of these dreams or the result of another rare form of a brain disease unrelated to the ones I currently have. I got the news the other day after hours of testing. Still, I’ve one more MRI to undergo just to make sure nothing else is brewing inside my skull. My money’s on a space alien melding into my cerebellum.

Until then, I better sit down and finish writing those damn books. The nebulous future is here.